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Investing 101 - Feb 2, 2007 - Printable Version
- The Fall of the SEC
by Mark Faulk
Mark this week down on your calendars. In fact, do it Jim Cramer style: take a sharpie and write in big black letters across the entire week “THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END!” After years of calls for stock market reform being ignored by the SEC, by Congress, by Wall Street, and by the media, the tide has finally begun to turn. After decades of the average investor being first lured into, then robbed blind in the stock market by Wall Street insiders, major brokerage firms, and hedge funds while our federal officials sat idly by and watched, or worse yet, participated in the splitting up of the loot, there is light at the end of what up until now has been a dark tunnel. A couple of major events this week signaled impending defeat for those who have conspired to rob our country blind in blatant disregard of the very values upon which America was founded.
The first event took place, as is often the case in the world of politics, behind closed doors. A Tuesday afternoon phone call from a person who has long been a behind-the-scenes advocate for returning honesty and integrity to our financial markets first gave me reason to feel renewed hope. This is someone who has been working quietly but tirelessly to help those of us who have been sounding the alarm for years, the same person who helped to set up a Senate Banking Committee hearing over two years ago, only to have it killed by then Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL).
This is the gist of that phone call: Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT), one of the few members of Congress whose hands seem to be clean enough to speak out for America on this issue, has been educating the new Democratic Chairman of the Banking Committee, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) on the issues of stock market fraud. According to Bennett, Dodd is “open to discussing the issue,” and to possibly reopening the hearing into the SEC in the Senate Banking Committee…or should I say open to conducting the hearings that were never allowed to take place in 2005. Meetings were set up to discuss the issue, and I forwarded a few relevant articles to give to Sen. Dodd in hopes of showing that even recent tepid efforts by the SEC to deal with fraud were nothing more than slaps on the wrists, fines generally amounting to a fraction of the damage done to companies and shareholders.
Along with the articles to back it up, I sent this short email at 3 in the morning after driving 350 miles from beautiful Lubbock, TX. on a business trip, back home to Middle America, USA:
Here are a couple of recent articles about hedge funds and naked short selling. The issue is finally beginning to receive some mainstream limited press, and the SEC is still essentially doing nothing to stop it. Hedge funds still aren't regulated, and the ones that are caught receive slaps on the wrist.
In recent months, in case after case, the SEC has negotiated fines that have a huge disconnect with the amount of money stolen and the damage done to companies and investors, and usually with the perpetrator "neither denying or admitting guilt." The fines are so small that they have become merely a cost of doing business.
Recently, Eagletech won a decision against the DTC to have an estimated 40,000 pages of documents concerning alleged trading violations released to the company's attorneys, although no charges have been filed yet.
Novastar has had some favorable recent rulings as well, but again, nothing major.
Also, a 21 year-old kid was arrested just last week who hacked into online accounts of investors and used their accounts....and their money....to manipulate the price of 17 penny stocks. One CEO, Hugo Cancio of Fuego Entertainment (FUGO.OB), was on my radio show last week, and described how his stock, which has only 9 million free-trading shares, was manipulated from over $1.40 a share to under .20 in a matter of weeks (the stock actually lost 90% of its value in three trading days), by this same 21 year-old. My main point on the show was that the SEC and the stock market regulators should take this as a sign that something is terribly wrong with the system. If a 21 year-old can do severe damage to 17 companies that easily, imagine what damage "the professional con artists" can, and are, doing.
This is beyond crisis stage, and I firmly believe that the destruction of our incubator companies by unregulated hedge funds, and the moving of massive amounts of our country's wealth offshore, has directly contributed to our country's recent downslide in our position as the world economic leader. Forget about outsourcing our jobs, we're outsourcing our wealth, and killing jobs even before they are created.
This is an issue that rests squarely with the SEC, DTC, and Wall Street, whose neglect and even collusion with hedge funds has resulted in record profits for brokers and obscene wealth for hedge fund managers....at the expense of our country's economic well-being. This is a house of cards, and it's teetering dangerously close to collapse.
Hope this helps....if I can do anything else, please feel free to call me. Thanks for all your help, without people like you, this would be a lost cause, and the damage to our economy would eventually become irreversible.
Did a single email dashed off at 3 in the morning, and the accompanying articles help shed a little light on the problems we face as investors, and America faces as a nation in crisis? It’s hard to say, but I do know this: more than one senator has said that the only way to force action from Congress is to speak out, to let them know that America wants our broken system fixed. Or better yet, dismantled altogether and reassembled in a way that safeguards against fraud, instead of one filled with built-in loopholes.
So here’s the plan: Every American who feels as if they have been wronged by a corrupt stock market, and indeed, every American who understands the financial drain on our country and the loss of jobs and productivity due to victimized companies, needs to raise their voices in unison. AMERICA NEEDS TO SPEAK OUT, AND SPEAK OUT NOW.
When Senator Chris Dodd returns to work next Monday, he needs to walk into an office that has been buried in emails and phone calls, all calling for one thing – a Senate Banking Committee investigation into fraud on Wall Street, and a thorough investigation into the SEC.
Two other more public events capped off the week that signaled the beginning of the end for the SEC. On Thursday, the day after meetings were held in Washington, two other senators renewed their own attacks on the SEC in a case involving SEC attorney Gary J. Aguirre, who was fired for attempting to question Wall Street kingpin John J. Mack.
Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said that “The S.E.C. should have taken Mr. Aguirre’s allegations seriously. Instead, it circled the wagons and shot the whistle-blower — an all-too-familiar practice in Washington.” He also said that the SEC’s investigation into the case “was plagued with problems from its beginning to its abrupt conclusion. The termination of Mr. Aguirre by the S.E.C. was highly suspect given the timing and circumstances.”
Senator Arlen Spector (R-PA) saved his harshest words for the SEC.’s inspector general, Walter J. Stachnik. Spector said that in all his years in the Senate he could not recall “an I.G. who said less, did less and was thoroughly inadequate in the investigation.”
An inquiry conducted by the Senate Judiciary and Finance Committees, and released on Thursday, said that “At best, the picture shows extraordinarily lax enforcement by the S.E.C. At worse, the picture is colored with overtones of a possible cover-up.”
Finally, members of Congress are beginning to say what advocates of stock market reform have known all along, that the SEC is as corrupt as the stock market that they are responsible for overseeing. While it is obvious that there are rank-and-file employees who are hardworking and honest, the corruption at the top of the SEC is way beyond criminal, it is treasonous.
AMERICA NEEDS TO SPEAK OUT, AND SPEAK OUT NOW!
To top off a week that will be remembered as one of the turning points in the battle to return honesty and integrity to our financial markets, Overstock.com filed a $3.5 billion lawsuit in California state court Friday against 10 of the largest U.S. securities firms, accusing them of participating in a “massive, illegal stock market manipulation scheme” to defraud the company and its shareholders.
Overstock's suit names Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Bank of New York, Citigroup. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, and UBS as defendants in the lawsuit.
Patrick Byrne has been under relentless attack from a number of financial media reporters, many of whom have ties to hedge funds and short sellers themselves, for joining forces with other stock market reform advocates in calling for a major overhaul of our financial system. That Congress has finally begun to awaken to the problem at the same time that Overstock’s lawsuit is filed is poetic justice for Byrne, and vindication for those who have battled against power, greed, and wealth in an effort to save our country from financial ruin.
As satisfying as this week has been to those of us who have spent years fighting a battle that at times seemed at times to be almost a hopeless cause, we cannot rest in our efforts. Now is the time to sound the alarm even louder than before, to spread the word across our country before it’s too late. Now is the time to let Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd know that this issue will not simply go away.
One last time, in unison:
AMERICA NEEDS TO SPEAK OUT, AND SPEAK OUT NOW!
You can email Senator Chris Dodd at:
http://dodd.senate.gov/index.php?q=node/3128&cat=Opinion
or call him at:
Washington D.C. (202) 224-2823
Fax: (202) 224-1083
Connecticut (860) 258-6940
This article is also posted on my blog at:
http://www.thesanitycheck.com/Blogs/MarkFaulksBlog/tabid/86/Default.aspx
Post your comments there, or better yet, post copies of the emails that you sent to Senator Dodd.
Voice your opinion on our message board (you don't have to sign up to post).